Abit to stop making motherboards (again) by end of 2008?
 

Apparently abit will continue to deliver mainboards until the end of the year and will honour RMAs and warranties for three years subsequently.

Rumours of abit's demise from mainboards were circulating widely last May, prompting an emphatic denial from abit. Our sources tell us that abit still intended to continue with mainboards at the time and that this decision was only made in the last couple of weeks.

Taiwanese manufacturer Universal Scientific International (USI) acquired abit in May of 2006 and it's now officially called Universal abit. There have been reports of defections and departures from the abit mainboard division ever since then, so there is a certain feeling of inevitability about this news.

http://channel.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=15225

When we talked with Abit's PR folk at Cebit this year they weren't really posivitive about the company's future when it came down to motherboards; they motherboards come out later than most competitors, don't offer new features, don't have bargain prices... in the end, in a motherboard market where success in high end trickles down to mid-low end you have to have the fastest kit out there to stand a chance; even if the masses won't buy your high end kit. DFI was pretty much unknown until they hired Abit's BIOS dev; their next motherboard had features and overclocking potential only previously seen on Abit motherboards.... can one man make or break a company? Fact is that after he left no Abit motherboard quite reached the heights it had when Oskar Wu was working for them.

last time I spoke to someone who works for Abit part-time, there was no intention of leaving the motherboard market. That conversation took place after cebit.

I was talking a very sober PR person :D

I gotta agree with Jmke in that Abit has nothing to differentiate themselves. Their boards are priced like any other, do not OC the best, do not offer anything unique, and some of their boards/BIOS's with P35/X38 had been especially bad. This ensured that I never bought another Abit board, and even if I was still for whatever silly reason considering it... I certainly wouldn't now that the company itself likely is going to exit the motherboard business. Abit themselves can't state this publicly, and likely would not right up until the last possible moment.

Sadly enough, it's the opinion over some Abit employees as well, not only Jmke's :(

After Oskar left Abit has never recovered. They have taken too much time cruising the Oskar Wu bios wavs until people realised that their biosses couldn't cut it any more, and indeed, nothing special came out of the company. Instead of differentiating they just tagged along. It has come this far that they even won't be missed in my opinion.